Boys in the Valley(63)

“Stop!”

The images vanish like the snuffing of a candle. He’s breathing heavy, hunched over on all fours, staring at the dirt at the bottom of the hole. His stomach boils and he wants to vomit, but holds it in, focuses on deep breaths. His skin is tingling, as if his limbs are asleep, and his mind feels untethered, no longer part of his body. If feels as though his entire being is in the hands of another, some awesome power, his body tied to his spirit by nothing but a flimsy thread of black yarn.

He raises his face slowly, looks through strands of clotted hair. His head throbs. A bloody string of drool slips from his bottom lip. He sees Bartholomew, standing against the far wall, hands folded neatly in front of him, ankles crossed. His face a pale blur in the darkness.

Near Bartholomew, huddled into the near corner, knees drawn up to his chin, perceptibly shaking, is Ben. He looks so small in the thick shadows. Johnson can’t see either of them clearly, the light from above is dim—darker, he realizes, than the early-afternoon light he was walking in when first going for the horses. The day has grown late.

The horses. Cut up. Butchered.

He shakes his head, grunts, and forces himself to his feet. The hole seems much smaller with him inside of it. He looks up toward the opening, gauging the distance. Were he to jump he could almost touch the open trapdoor with his fingertips.

Almost.

“What is this?” His words are thick, groggy. Slurry. “How long have I been down here?”

Bartholomew takes a step forward, and Johnson—inexplicably—fights off the urge to take a step back.

Something’s wrong with him. Something is very off about this boy.

He looks over to Ben, as if for answers, but the child simply cowers. Johnson wonders if Ben’s mind is broken, or if he’s simply so frozen he can’t think straight.

“I must have slipped,” Johnson mumbles, answering his own question. A sane answer to how he got down here.

No, something pulled at me. Something seized me, yanked me down here.

It whispered in my ear . . . what?

I’m here . . . and then: Join us.

And whatever grabbed me . . . was strong.

“Impossible,” he murmurs. He studies his dirty hands, then glances up once more at the open trapdoor—snow flurrying past, a charcoal sky above—then back to Ben in the corner. His eyes rove everywhere, everywhere except at the skinny boy now walking toward him.

Here, in the dark beneath the earth, Johnson is stunned to realize he’s frightened of the child. He feels it in his bones, in his guts.

Pure, naked terror.

What’s wrong with me?

He takes a sideways step toward Ben, away from Bartholomew, who pauses, eyebrows raised in curiosity. Johnson ignores him for now, tries to study the other boy more clearly through the gloom. “Ben? Are you okay?

Ben’s only response is to lower his forehead into the arms crossed over his knees; to shrink away even more than he already has. To hide inside himself.

“Ben’s a little peaked right now, Brother Johnson.”

Now Johnson turns, finally, to face Bartholomew. He’s relieved at what he sees, what he feels. Just a boy, he thinks, almost grinning at his own fear, his stupidity. Just another brat that needs dealing with. He takes a step toward Bartholomew—in the confined space, he hopes it will intimidate the boy. He badly wants to wipe that little smirk off his face, wants to see fear in his big brown eyes. “What’s wrong with him? Tell me.”

But Bartholomew does not step backward, or frown in discomfort, or look in any way afraid. Instead, he puts a thoughtful finger to his chin. A doctor discussing a patient. “I’d say he’s suffering from indecision. I think he’s having a hard time deciding what to do.”

Ben begins breathing more heavily. More rapidly.

Johnson looks at the boy huddled in the corner. “That true, Ben? What’s wrong? Decide what?”

Bartholomew’s eyes widen with feigned bemusement. “Well, right now, for example, he’s trying to decide whether to kill you . . .” He gives Ben a sad, parental look. “Or whether to die.”

Johnson says nothing—his mind drawing nothing but hollow words and empty ideas, as if he’s flipping a deck of poker cards looking for an ace, but the faces are all blank. He can’t think. Can’t respond. Instead, he simply looks around the dark hole, as if the answers will come seeping through the mud walls like worms.

There are voices in the air. Overhead. Surprised, he spins and looks up toward the opening. There are shadows now, their movement breaking up the dying light.

“Brother Johnson?”

His head snaps back to Bartholomew, who now wears a quizzical expression. Johnson’s mouth works, but no sound comes out. His lips are quivering, as if he might start blubbering in front of this brat. There’s a loud KNOCK from above. He gasps in fear, twists his head once more to observe the trapdoor, the flittering shadows. Tears sting his eyes, and a sob escapes his throat.

“Are you okay, Brother Johnson?” Bartholomew asks, gesturing toward the cold dirt floor. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

His brain is stabbed with heat, sharp and painful, as if he’s been rammed through the forehead with a red-hot needle. He sees a flash of white and he screams. Grimacing, he clutches the sides of his head. His legs give out and he crumples to the dirt like a ragdoll. Whimpering uncontrollably now, he shuffles himself backward, leans his back against the moist, frigid wall.